Darren Weir’s alleged cruelty charges point to failed plot
Jarrod McLean and Tyson Kermond had no idea they were under police surveillance during last year’s spring carnival when they allegedly conspired to bet on horses overseen by Darren Weir. But those actions will almost certainly cost them their careers, writes Leo Schlink.
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For allegedly barbaric horsemen, Jarrod McLean and Tyson Kermond are certainly mug punters.
McLean and Kermond had no idea they were under police surveillance in the middle of last year’s spring carnival.
Kermond was drawn into racing through top trainer Darren Weir’s former trusted lieutenant McLean.
Billy Hernan — a retired jockey who later operated as a Racing Victoria track walker — is also close to McLean.
McLean, Kermond and Hernan, police allege, conspired to bet on prominent horses they believed had an advantage thanks to abuse overseen by Weir.
But their ambitions allegedly proved as hollow as their awareness that Victoria Police’s sporting integrity intelligence unit was closing in.
Of the bets traced, none was successful. And they were hardly significant wagers.
But those bets — and the treatment that allegedly preceded them — will almost certainly cost McLean what is left of a tattered career.
Ditto for Kermond.
None of the group, including Weir, was alert to the fact police had them under surveillance when the alleged maltreatment reached its savage zenith last spring.
From October 24 until Melbourne Cup day on November 6, police became aware of allegedly corrupt behaviour in Weir’s state-of-the-art Warrnambool barns.
They were also secretly recording suspect activity at Weir’s Ballarat stables, where they would later uncover three jiggers in the trainer’s master bedroom.
What Weir knew, if anything, of the use of poly pipe to strike Yogi and Red Cardinal as they exercised in blinkers to the sound of whistling is yet to be established.
Police allege the Melbourne Cup-winning trainer was involved in the use of the electric barbs on Red Cardinal, Yogi and Tosen Basil, the Japanese import who later died from injuries sustained in a paddock accident.
Until the laying of 10 police counts involving animal cruelty and the possession of a firearm last week, Weir was known to be harbouring dreams of a return to the profession that led him to fame, either as a pre-trainer or in a smaller version of his colossal former operation.
As he stood in the foyer of the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, as McLean, Kermond and Hernan lounged nonchalantly on nearby chairs, those hopes appeared more remote than ever.
With evidence — much of it video and some believed to be phone taps — to be tabled ahead of February’s committal hearing, Weir’s future is growing more uncertain by the day.
Until the January 30 bust, Weir had been an abiding certainty in racing. He had been celebrated and cosseted by swarms of powerful new owners and championed in promotional material by the industry.
He was, after all, the epitome of “racing romance”, the ultimate example of bush battler made good.
But, for longer than anyone cares to remember, questions have been asked about just how legitimate Weir’s methods were.
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Those questions echo louder today than ever with the material aired against the four accused in 19 charge sheet and summons pages.
Terms such as “psychological conditioning”, “torturing”, “abusing” and “terrifying” leap off the page.
And, if the police brief is proven, those alleged monstrous means ran to pitiful ends — not one successful bet, shattered careers and brutalised horses.